Female Super Villains Price Guide

The comics are chock-full of male heroes and villains, and generally have only token female characters. Many of these are often relegated to supporting roles, or are more important as love interests for the male characters than as characters on their own.

Many female villains, however, form interesting relationships with male characters, especially heroes, and the resulting tension can make for some very tense situations.

Batman, especially, is susceptible to this (as is Daredevil, to a lesser extent), and has had many storylines goosed along by his inability to stay away from "bad girls."

All romance aside, there are many female super villains who stand as some of the deadliest beings in comics, dealing in death and destruction as boldly as any male villain. Let's look at the value of comics featuring some of the most intense and important female super-villains of all time.

Have Your Female Super-Villain Comics Valued!If you've got some copies of first appearances or origins of important female super-villains, then click here to have them valued FREE by Sell My Comic Books!

Catwoman (First Appearance: Batman #1, Spring, 1940)

Catwoman, the very first of the female super villains, is Selina Kyle, but in her first appearance, she was known only as "The Cat," and did not appear in costume.

Rather, she was at that time a cat burglar and ingenue, the first femme fatale of Batman's superhero career. Beautiful and intelligent, she tried, for the first of many times, to seduce Bruce, asking him to become The King of Crime and be her partner, full of promise and suggestion.

He refused, of course, but when she jumped over the side of the yacht which Batman was using to bring her to justice, he allowed her to escape, opting not to pursue her.

Thus began the first of many "forbidden fruit" relationships for the old Bat-Brain, and over the years, she gained a slinky costume and some very naughty gadgets, including a cat-o-nine-tails and razor-sharp retractable claws.

Cheetah (First Appearance: Wonder Woman #6, October, 1943)

The Cheetah has been through several incarnations, but all have battled Wonder Woman.

The original, non-super-powered Cheetahs were Priscilla Rich (Golden and Silver Age) and her niece, Deborah Domaine (Silver and Bronze Age).

Priscilla Rich had been a society debutant whose inner "vicious huntress" came out as the result of cattiness, interestingly: she had been outshone at a charity event by Wonder Woman, and devoted herself to foiling Diana Prince ever after. She and her niece had no super-powers other than cunning and determination.

Later, the female super villain Barbara Minerva became an actually cheetah-like version of the Cheetah, complete with tail and the speed and strength of a cheetah.

The character remains, in whatever form, Wonder Woman's most frequent opponent.

After a single Golden-Age appearance battling the Flash, Star Sapphire was rebooted at the dawn of the Silver Age as Carol Ferris, Hal Jordan's love interest, daughter of his employer, and secretly possessed by the queen of the Zamarons, a race of warrior women who impel her to battle Green Lantern as Star Sapphire, in order to prove women’s superiority to men.

The star sapphire they give her the ability to fly, project force beams, and do a variety of never-fully-defined things.

Later, the whole continuity would be changed to create the Star Sapphires, a "Violet Lantern Corps," with purple power rings fueled by the emotion love.

Carol Ferris eventually becomes Queen of the Zamarons, and other Star Sapphires take over.

The Enchantress is Amora, an Asgardian who learned magic as an apprentice of Karnilla, Queen of the Norns.

As a female super villain she is seductive, deceptive, and incredibly skilled in all areas of magic and witchcraft, and along with the usual array of Asgardian powers, is known to be able to control men's minds, levitate, teleport, and create masterful illusions.

She has had romantic designs, on and off, towards Thor over the years, and has worked with Loki and The Executioner, as well as with earthlings like Baron Zemo, working towards her evil purposes.

Poison Ivy (First Appearance: Batman #181, June, 1966)

With Poison Ivy, we have another in the long line of female super villains upon whom Bruce Wayne becomes somewhat smitten. Strange that it should happen so often, and that Bruce is always the last to know. Robin always seems to pick up on it first.

Poison Ivy was originally Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley, a botanist who was betrayed and poisoned by a man. Instead of dying, she developed an immunity to all plant toxins, and later turned somewhat greenish, and became able to control plants with her mind.

Dressed in a strapless, little, leafy bodysuit, she is every inch a femme fatale, and has used her feminine wiles to woo Batman into submission when her ability to control plants cannot do the job.

A major retcon revised her story to give her an origin that involved Alec Holland (of Swamp Thing fame) and an unclear source for her powers, which included the ability to secrete deadly plant toxins from her lips, killing anyone she kissed.

Mystique (First Appearance: Ms. Marvel #16, May, 1978)

Perhaps best known from the X-Men movies, in which she tends to be a naked and blue female super villain, Mystique is a shape-shifting mutant villain who is revealed to be more than 100 years old and the mother of both Nightcrawler and the villain Graydon Creed.

At one point she joined the X-Men, to work as a double-agent for Charles Xavier.

She is a cunning strategist and skilled at espionage, can take any form, and speaks more than 14 languages.

Killer Frost (First Appearance: Firestorm #3, June, 1978)

There are two primary Killer Frosts.

The first was Crystal Frost, angry at being spurned by Martin Stein (one half of the original Firestorm). Accidentally locked in a permafrost chamber, she gained power over cold, enabling her to create and manipulate cold and ice.

After her death in a battle with Firestorm, she was replaced by her friend and colleague Louise Lincoln, who replicated the same accident and the same powers, motivated by revenge for the death of her friend.

There have been two other versions since then, making Killer Frost one of the most handed-off female super villain mantles.

All the versions have roughly the same powers, although very different origin stories.

Dark Phoenix (First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #134, June, 1980)

After the Hellfire Club's machinations in attempt to turn her into their Black Queen (in Uncanny X-Men #132) seemed to have succeeded, it is revealed in #134 that Jean Grey is not who she seems to be, but rather a cosmic entity named Phoenix who took on Jean's identity, after Jean apparently died saving the X-Men.

Phoenix, to distance itself from ties to the Jean Grey identity, attacks the X-Men, eventually sacrificing itself out of concern for them, unable to stop "being" Jean.

Silver Sable (First Appearance: Amazing Spider-Man #265, June, 1985)

Silver Sable is a mercenary and vigilante.

The daughter of Ernst Sablinova, Silver (her birth name) inherited his place as head of the Wild Pack, an international vigilante organization.

She is highly trained in hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, is an Olympic-level gymnast, and is a skilled marksman and swordsman. She also has greater than average strength, speed, agility, reflexes, and will power.

Silver Sable has worked with Spider-Man on numerous occasions, tracking down quarries, and has also, as a mercenary, been involved in various crimes.

She straddles the line between hero and villain nicely, in a silver, skintight, Kevlar-lined bodysuit.

Dark Angel (First Appearance: Wonder Woman vol. 2, #131, March, 1998)

Dark Angel is a wandering spirit who for many years inhabited the body of Baroness Paula von Gunther to battle Wonder Woman in a retconned World War II-era.

No, she wasn't a Golden Age female super villain, and no, we're not talking about the Earth Two Wonder Woman, either. All of that has been erased from the continuity since those halcyon days when characters' origins remained consistent for up to five or ten years at a stretch.

After many battles with Wonder Woman, Dark Angel created and then possessed a double of Wonder Woman, who became the new version of Donna Troy, who readers of comics from the old days will remember as Wonder Girl, who used to be Wonder Woman's little sister.

Dark Angel, whoever the heck she is now or will be next year, is quite powerful and is able to control minds, teleport, alter her size, and control the stream of time itself.

Harley Quinn (First Appearance: Batman: Harley Quinn, October, 1999)

Also The Batman Adventures #12, 1993 (not canonical)

Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, M.D., first appeared as Harley Quinn, the Joker's sometime-girlfriend and accomplice, in the animated series Batman: The Animated Series.

Her first comic book appearance, although not considered canonical, was in The Batman Adventures #12, a comic spin-off of the world of the animated series. Her name (a pun on "harlequin") led to her jester-style costume.

She was a psychiatrist who'd been assigned to the Joker in Arkham Asylum, and had an affair with him. The affair was discovered, and she was stripped of her credentials and committed to Arkham herself.

After breaking out, she used her genius-level intellect, knowledge of psychology, and amoral psyche to establish herself as a sort of female super villain equivalent of the Joker.

She later acquired immunity to poison from Poison Ivy, with whom she often has teamed up.

Harley Quinn is deadly, and perhaps one of the only characters as amoral as the Joker himself.